Holiday Cooking - Cacao

This month I have researched some of the plants that flavor my holiday baking. Today I’m learning about cacao (or cocoa, when it is processed into a powder). Recall that cacao was mentioned earlier, in conjunction with vanilla (Holiday Cooking – Vanilla). Hot chocolate, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate covered almonds, and Grand Mariner truffles are just a few of my culinary favorites made with chocolate. Chocolate can be light or dark (with higher cacao content).

Theobroma cacao is in the Byttneriaceae (or Malvaceae) family, and native to wet lowland tropical areas of Central and South America. Cacao is thought to have originated in the Amazon, and was cultivated in Central America by the Mayans and Aztecs. Christopher Columbus was served hot chocolate in Nicaragua by a local chieftain on one of his expeditions to find India; Hernando Cortez was served hot chocolate in Mexico by Montezuma (Cortez reported that cacao beans were used as currency instead of gold). Cacao is now grown in places such as Madagascar, Polynesia, Tahiti, Indonesia, Malaysia, Uganda, and Guatemala with similar climates. The Spaniards introduced cocoa (and vanilla) to Europe.

Botanical illustration of Theobroma cacao
from Koehler’s Medicinal Plants (published before
1923 and public domain in the United States).

Cacao is harvested from the fruit pod of an evergreen tree that grows to 25 feet or more in the wild, in the shade of taller trees. Its leaves are leathery and oblong to 12 inches long. Flowers are borne on the trunk and branches in long pedicels, with yellow petals surround by a pinkish calyx. Fruits are yellow, purple or brown, with 10-ribs to one foot long. The seeds are elliptical to one inch long, and borne within the fruit pulp. Propagation is by seed. The seeds are fermented and dried to yield cocoa and chocolate.